Only Very Important Plastics Allowed

Robin, Part 2

Not much happened in the twenty days between the diagnosis and the hurricane. Dad shuffled around the house, Robin tried to take care of him, friends and family members stopped by and were sent away, pills were sorted, meals were discarded, the television sat on and loud.

And the day of the storm was a blur. Is was the first day since the diagnosis that dad allowed himself to be helped and saved – a shocking moment for a man who had spent his entire life ready to die and finally facing two opportunities to do so – and Robin watched as pills bobbed violently through the storm waters. They were pink and green and blue and white and all different shapes and sizes, like the most macabre party confetti at the world’s worst party.

Robin sat on the highest stair of the house, looking down at the rising water, the bobbing pills, there was a baseball trophy bobbing up and down and up and down and up and down. Nobody living in this house had ever played baseball. Triumphantly, the golden statue of a batter bobbed, seemingly from a house on the block with players in it.